RSS is an alien concept to many marketers, so RSS strategy is pretty much off the radar for the vast majority. The trouble is, there are mixed messages being sent out by the experts, so it is hard to know where to start.

It is just like usability. Jakob Nielsen believes in a rules-based approach. Jared Spool does not. So who do you trust?

Digg.com founder Kevin Rose has unveiled plans to expand the social news aggregator into other vertical sectors, such as politics and entertainment.

Kevin explained to attendees at a recent eBay Developer’s Conference a big redesign is in the offing, which will allow Team Digg to broaden the scope of the website beyond technology. Watch out Yahoo! News…

One lost book, one disgruntled customer and a potential million dollar legal fee for Amazon - it's the latest in a series of morality tales showing how e-commerce companies can be hit where it hurts most due to bad customer experience.

How difficult can it be? It's only a text box and a button, after all.

It is, however, its very simplicity that makes the search box such a great example of the power of design patterns.

What can go wrong when we design a search box (what are the antipatterns)? What are the key elements of best practice in the design of a search box that enable us to avoid these pitfalls? And how many e-commerce search boxes comply with all aspects of the design pattern that we've just developed? For something so apparently simple, it comes as a bit of a surprise that the answer to that last question is none!

"E-Commerce Design Patterns are a distillation and summary of best practice, that can be applied quickly and effectively to create a variety of specific design solutions"

This is how we've defined design patterns. In this post, we explore in what way design patterns are 'patterns' and then tease apart our definition to compare each part with the definitions other design pattern experts have used.

eBay is launching new community tools and features to help sellers better market their products, according to a report on AuctionBytes. In particular, the online auction behemoth is adopting tagging, blogs and a community wiki.

The legal eagles said they "anticipate the possibility of unauthorized streaming and downloading of FIFA World Cup matches” (on BoingBoing). That’s what we call forward-thinking, or, maybe it is simply a good opportunity to bill the client. Lawyer’s letters ain’t cheap...

Pay-per-click keyword prices have been falling in many sectors for the past year or so, according to the agencies and client-side marketers whom we regularly speak with in the UK, and as evidenced by the great US-focused research published by Fathom.

In 2005, my gut reaction to falling keyword prices was that it was merely a correction. After all, growth in spending on paid-search surged massively between 2004 and 2005, driven by much competition and new entrants to the PPC scene.

New advertisers – and some existing ones - may have over-egged the cake to secure a number one listing, before revising keyword bids downwards once the resulting sales didn’t provide enough (or any) return on investment. Paid-search is seen as one of the lowest hanging fruits for those new to online marketing, and PPC virgins may simply have been a bit too gung-ho to begin with.

But maybe keyword deflation suggests something more sinister, something that isn’t purely about new entrants bidding too much to attract visitors. Falling ROI may indicate a rising number of fraudulent clicks.

Is click fraud is in fact a bigger issue than the paid-search networks are prepared to let on? And is keyword deflation the smoking gun?